By Jeff Brumley As a CBF-trained minister working at a Southern Baptist church in Hawaii, Eric Hasha says he could be the poster child for ministerial isolation. “I’m literally and figuratively on an island when it comes to moderate Baptist…
SBC membership drops below 16 million
By Bob Allen Membership in the Southern Baptist Convention declined for the fifth straight year in 2011, falling under 16 million for the first time since 2000, according to annual statistics released June 12 by LifeWay Christian Resources. The 2011…
Faith leaders protest contraceptive rule
By Bob Allen Nearly 150 faith leaders wrote Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius June 11 protesting the administration’s requirement that faith-based employers include contraceptive coverage for women in their health-care plans. The Affordable Health Care Act, also known…
Florida Baptists challenge abuse ruling
By Bob Allen The Florida Baptist Convention is contesting a May 17 jury verdict that found the Southern Baptist Convention affiliate liable for sexual abuse committed by a former church planter. The Florida Baptist Witness reported June 12 that the…
Baptist school fires gay librarian
By Bob Allen A gay librarian at Shorter University who refused to sign a statement rejecting homosexuality has been fired, the Save Our Shorter website reported June 7. Michael Wilson, 50, off-campus librarian for professional studies since 1998, returned his…
CBF assembly sessions to be webcast
By Bob Allen Five main sessions of the upcoming June 20-23 Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly in Fort Worth, Texas, will be broadcast live online. Sessions can be viewed live or accessed later from archives at www.thefellowship.info/fortworth. The first webcast…
Church aids widow facing eviction
By Jeff Brumley Mary Cate Jones never doubted her congregation would help when it learned she faced a foreclosure crisis last month. But raising $35,000 in the last two weeks of May and finding a donor to match the rest?…
LETTER: Sex conference missed the mark
From all that I have read, the Baptist Conference on Sexuality and Covenant [Herald, April 30] went just as I feared it would. Many speakers used fanciful and complex, but misguided, theological arguments to persuade participants that some homosexual and…
LETTER: Creationism vs. evolution
When God presented the account of how he created the world and universe in Genesis, he gave an explanation that was straight forward and easy to understand. We, of course, have no idea of what processes took place when he…
OPINION: Reading Scripture is like rock climbing
In a recent interview with the New Voice Media Group [which includes the Religious Herald, see May 28], I used rock climbing as an analogy for interpreting Bible passages about the role of women. Whether climbing a steep rock or…
OPINION: ‘Melancholia’ and the Good War
Death. Final, epic, Wagnerian death in a colossal collision between a rogue planet off-course and Earth. Somehow Melancholia makes it beautiful, poetic and completely and peacefully final. The film by director Lars von Trier is a sumptuous exploration of the…
WINN RECOMMENDS
Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, Mark Noll (Eerdmans) More than 15 years ago, Noll fired a shot across the bow of the evangelical ship with his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. In those pages, he…